Monday, April 6, 2015

During the past three months since I arrived in
Serena camp, I slowly began to realize that this has been an unusually crazy
time in the Masai Mara. According to Philomen, one of the Kenyan’s who works in
camp, the past quarter has seen the longest drought here since 1993. As a
consequence of the drought and the frequent fires that have been set in nearby
Tanzania, we had a huge blaze spread through the territory of our Happy Zebra
clan. The littlest members of the clans have been most traumatically affected
by drought and unfortunately we have had to perform several necropsies on cubs that
just couldn’t seem to handle the arid conditions.

But that's enough depressing news, and if the Lion
King taught me anything, it was about the “Circle of Life”: Death leads to new
life!

Over the past week or so, we've received plenty of
rain. The watering holes are starting to fill back up, the ungulates are
finding more healthy grass to eat and, in turn, the hyenas are finding plenty
of healthy ungulates to eat!

The fire that spread through the Happy Zebra
territory was extinguished weeks ago, and now with help from the rain and the
fertile soil created by the fire, we are starting to see a lush carpet of
healthy, green grass (see pictures in Tracy's recent blog post.) The territory is again
becoming true to its name, and the zebras are very happy with their fresh new grass.

But the best piece of news? The necropsies seem to
be over and we have brand new cubs in two of our clans!

We had been noticing that Pike, the matriarch of
our Happy Zebra clan, had been acting awfully strange for the past few weeks for
a hyena with grown cubs. She had been hanging out at the den a lot and often
times was seen sacked out in the den hole. We had suspected for a while now
that she was hiding new cubs from us, but we weren't sure until recently when
they decided to poke their fuzzy little heads out to say hello!

One of Pike's new cubs checking us out

Pike's cubs, Lance and Morningstar nursing!

One of our lowest ranking females in the Happy
Zebra clan, Silk, also gave birth to two new cubs, Nightshade and Amanita, that
she brought to one of the communal dens recently.

More strange behavior in the Happy Zebra clan has
been coming from Ojibway. Ojibway's only kids, Muon and Higgs, are old enough to
start having babies themselves, but Ojibway has been hanging around the den very
frequently. We are pretty sure this means Ojibway has a new litter of cubs to
tend to. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to see the cubs yet, so no
pictures of these guys.

And finally, in South clan, we have a brand new cub
from Cheese Whiz! Cheese Whiz is a relatively low-ranking hyena, and doesn't
like to hang around the den very often, so it’s very exciting to see her with a
new cub because it means we'll get to see a lot more of her. Here's a picture
of Cheese Whiz carrying her new cub, Nerd:

In recent months, we've gone through some tough times on this side of
the park, but things are looking up and we've got lots of new cubs to become
acquainted with. The rainy season has brought birth, renewal and regrowth to
the Mara- such is the “Circle of Life”!

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